Full Belly Files | My Wild Week & the ‘Blood Vines’ Podcast

Gather in the gardens of Lotusland on May 16 for their first ever Farmer Forward Dinner.

Sign up to get Matt Kettmann’s Full Belly Files, which serves up multiple courses of food & drink coverage every Friday, going off-menu from our regularly published content to deliver tasty nuggets of restaurant, recipe, and refreshment wisdom to your inbox

If you’re looking for me any evening next week, you won’t find me at home. I’ll be at the Hotel Californian on Monday, bouchon on Tuesday, the Canary Hotel rooftop on Wednesday, Godmothers in Summerland on Thursday, Lotusland on Friday, and, on Saturday, my midday at the Presidio will be followed by an evening at Grimm’s Bluff Vineyard just off Highway 154. Oh, and maybe at a few tasting rooms serving specially priced $10 glasses of wine in between.

That’s what happens when a number of events that I helped organize converge on the same week. Specifically, I’m referring to the Santa Barbara Culinary Experience (all week), Lotusland’s Farmer Forward Dinner (May 16), White Buffalo Land Trust’s Roots of the Future: The Art of Agriculture fundraiser (May 17), and then, under the banner of The Independent, the end of our third annual Wine Week (May 8-14) and the second class in our Cheese the Day! pairing series (May 14).

Here’s Matt with winemakers, from left, Magan Kunin, Gretchen Voelcker, and Hayden Felice at last year’s Grand Wine Tasting. He’ll be running two panels in the Presidio chapel again on May 17.

It’s sure to be my busiest events week of the year and probably the busiest I’ve been for a series of nights since I co-founded and helped run the five-day music festival and conference known as New Noise Santa Barbara from 2009 until 2016. That festival’s flow was early morning-to-afternoon industry chats with insiders like Chuck D, Kevin Lyman, and Budd Carr followed by late nights of rock, folk, punk, rap, electronica, and even country, often blazing into the post–1 a.m. hours.

This coming week is more attuned to my current age and interests, focusing on food, drink, and farming with, hopefully, earlier bedtimes and less dawn-time duties, aside from my usual morning obligations. None of my roles in the ensuing days — which range from moderating conversations with farmers, chefs, and winemakers to even easier jobs of small-talk, handshakes, and my old fallback of just being a reporter — appear to be particularly stressful.

The main challenge in attending back-to-back nights of relative indulgence is not indulging too much in order to stay sharp the following night. I’ve had plenty of practice, so I should be good, but if I look a little rundown by Sunday, you’ll know why.

And what am I doing that day when the work is done? Playing the recently reopened nine-hole golf course at Rancho San Marcos with my son and our friends. Hitting the links isn’t always the most relaxing thing in my life, but at least it will be a change of pace.

If you’d like to join in the fun, there are still seats and/or tickets available to a few of these events. They include:

Matt’s view of Cheese the Day! on May 7. Join him on May 14 for more wine and cheese fun.

Cheese the Day! Part Dieux: The second in this series (the first was just on May 7) features eight cheeses selected by the Cheese Shop Santa Barbara and presented by proprietor Kathryn Graham. Those will be paired with four wines, each presented by their maker: chenin blanc from Kunin, with Magan Kunin presenting; malvasia bianca by Lepiane, with Alison Thomson; gamay by Pali, with Nick Perr; and graciano by Frequency, with Zac Wasserman. Adding to the commentary will be Gala’s Tara Penke and Little Dom’s Brandon Boudet. The event is on the rooftop of the Canary Hotel on Wed., May 14, 6-8 p.m. Tix are here.

Lotusland Farmer Forward Dinner: A major fundraiser for the botanical wonderworld known as Lotusland, there are still a few seats available for this dinner, which features the produce of Jacob Grant from Roots Farm and fresh fish from Get Hooked Seafood, cooked by Duo Catering and paired with wines from The Hilt. I wrote a story with more details here. We’ll be chatting in between courses about the farming and the food. You can reserve your seat here.

S.B. Culinary Experience’s Grand Tasting: The largest event of the more than 75 meals, classes, and tours that fall under the Santa Barbara Culinary Experience banner, the Grand Tasting on Sat., May 17, at El Presidio State Historic Park in downtown Santa Barbara will feature more than 40 wineries and plenty of food. I’ll be hosting two panels, one on unique sites for growing pinot noir, the other on grape varieties that are “new” and growing in popularity in Santa Barbara. Details and tickets are here.

**My Podcast About the Blood Vines Podcast**

Every so often, the folks at Wine Enthusiast ask me to host one of the magazine’s podcasts, which tend to be interviews with winemakers about various industry trends or regional developments. But this time, the assignment was to interview a journalist named Chris Walker whose latest creation is the narrative podcast called Blood Vines.

To prepare, I listened to the entire podcast in one day, and found the true story mix of white zinfandel, wine fraud, and murder to be quite fascinating. I highly recommend that you check it out here. To listen to my interview with Chris Walker, in which we talk about the podcast but also much more, click here.

And if the sound of my voice talking wine just makes you want more, check out my other WE podcasts featuring: